This is really funny, since this is just the transcription of their daily business practice, so your experience shold have told you earlier. But only now do people see it, after years of Apple behaving this way, people still cramming to get into the apple-bottom, who are you to blame apple for actually write it down?
Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
221–230 of 234 posts
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#2221984
newspeak
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#223[deleted]
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is of course conscious of this trade-off (attractiveness of the platform+customer base vs. unattractiveness of being treated like shit by Apple). The thing is, they can easily back off when they will have to : today, most app developers won't snob the iPhone even if they're treated miserably. If they can't afford Android+iPhone portability, most of them will choose iPhone-only over Android-only. If/when a compe…
I think you are largely right, but don't forget that this pragmatic business view of the world does not dominate every phase in every hacker's life. Apple would be well advised to take note of the emotional sea change that helped sweep IBM and later Microsoft from their all powerful positions. Being hated is not a good position to be in for anyone, regardless of how powerful they may be at one point in time.
These companies have never been nor tried to be emotionally appreciated. Their success had nothing to do with appreciation.
IBM has been swept because, as a big hardware vending corporation, they refused to see that hardware was doomed to commoditization(1), and that software was what would matter in the future. They never enjoyed goodwill, and never needed to.
Microsoft took off because they've been the first and most ruthless hardware commoditizers. Then they maintained their position thanks to the interlocked Office / Windows monopolies. They didn't need any goodwill to get there, only IBM shortsightedness. And apart from XBox, which is far from being a monopoly, they consistently failed to sweep any market that wasn't closely tied to Windows/Office, maybe in part because they don't know how to build sympathy (who in his right mind would want to be labelled a Zune fan?)
(1) Interestingly, Xerox failed the same way to become Microsoft: although they invented the modern GUI and workstation decades in advance, they never truly tried to turn it into a cash-cow, because they kept seeing themselves as photocopier makers.
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#225Hasn't anyone else realized that this rule is totally unenforceable? How is Apple going to find out if something was originally written with Unity3D or Clojure? Everything is submitted to them as a binary. You can't inspect a binary and figure out what language the code that generated it was originally written in. So seriously, what's the problem here? Either there is none or I'm missing something.
$ ghc --make helloworld.hs $ strings helloworld|grep ghc|wc -l 19 $ csc helloworld.scm $ strings helloworld|grep chicken|wc -l 1 There are more telltales that might be harder to mask. Other tools have similar giveaways. It wouldn't be hard to set up an automated test for the most common ones.
And how hard would it be for those code translators to remove these footprints or even offer the user the option of leaving them out? Doesn't this edict invite code translators to work harder at leaving no trace that the code was generated or translated? The bigger question too is, isn't this just another stupid rule that developers can find a workaround for anyway?
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#226Actually created an account to write this...
What surprises me is not as much Apple's move (though it is truly ridiculous), as some apologists' responses. Talking about how "Adobe's just as bad," or that "it'll reduce crappy software in the store," or that "Apple's within their rights" is really missing the point.
The point is that this is totally unnecessary from a technological perspective. It's totally a business move to destroy competitors and pursue a bizarre vendetta against Adobe.
I teach in a business school, and am very 'pro competitive edge,' but this is just so short-sighted. Apple's competitive moves seem oriented to reducing anyone who could be a competitor to rubble out of some misguided belief that the iPhone paradigm is theirs, and that they should be able to dictate who makes money off of it.
Ultimately, any business adopting this approach dies. It make take 4-8 years for a competitor's product to reach equivalency, but it'll happen. Tech moves so fast that it'll be tough to keep a closed environment (even a good one) on top.
Furthermore, (and really to the point) I don't want to do business with any firm that thinks they can dictate if or how much profit I can make, or how I can approach my particular niche of interest. Apple keeps on reducing the way you can build apps; how do I know that my next app isn't going to compete with mobile Pages & get pulled? They're creating a totally closed and controlled platform, and you better hope that you don't run across any of their plans. It's a terrible business environment, and totally destructive.
Ridiculous.
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
That might be true, but the implicit assumption here is that only EA can make AAA games and indie developers just produce crap. That assumption has been demonstrated to be false on both points.
Not at all! You can buy a few C++ game engines (e.g. Torque) and port them. I have Torque running on Linux, Solaris, Mac, & Windows. Considering it's normal posix underneath, you just have to redo some plumbing.
Um. Except maybe you can't use TorqueScript for your game logic.
Unity is almost surely written in C++, but game logic is done in Javascript and C#, on Mono.
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#228I honestly can't believe the stupidity of the metaphors in this thread.
Cattle grazing on the commons? Like Apple's telling you "Don't program in a functional style"? It's a problem if the only store in town won't stock your goods? Telling Leonardo da Vinci he can only use gummy?
Is Apple pissing in your freedom flakes? Really?
The iPhone is not a commons. It was never a commons. No smartphone device IS a commons.
Apple is not dictating your programming style. They are dictating that you do not run cross-compiled software, written in a non-native language, on their device. This is not unreasonable.
There is nothing illegal, or immoral, or even marginally unreasonable, with a store refusing to stock your goods. Even if it's the only store in town.
It's not like telling Leonardo he can only use one medium, because of course, the iPhone is not the whole world, where da Vinci lived.
If one customer of da Vinci's only wanted art done in gummy, that would be an accurate parallel.
Seriously, guys, this is HN. Let's see some of that logical thinking.
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#229I've had a couple of close friends and relatives have health issues that almost killed them. Afterwords their personality changed. They became much more negative and harder to be around. The things I have read about Jobs is that he is a health nut. To have the problems he has had might have been a big emotional blow for him. Since he has come back, things have gotten much worse for partner relations and there is almo…
You don't change CEOs because you want a nicer guy.
You change CEOs when your current one starts making boneheaded power plays that will ultimately harm the company, but nobody has the balls to stand up to him because his eyes are weird.
Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does that really matter? If I sold chocolate covered bagels, and I was the only chocolate covered bagel store in town, do I have to serve you? Or, if you wanted to open your own chocolate covered bagel store in the only mall within 30 miles, does the mall operator have to lease you space? As a developer, I find the situation painful, but I think Apple views the appstore as their mall, and they want to control the…
Sure they can do what they like on the iPhone (within the grounds of the law) but we don't have to like it. And how does this change have anything to do with customer experience when they already vet customer experience when the app is submitted?
> but we don't have to like it.
developers for the iPhone are a dime a dozen. But there is only one Appstore for the iPhone.